a two movie weekend

September 9, 2013

The World’s End

Good fun, a very Doctor Who-ish kind of story, alien robots taking over small town, etc. The movie treads a line: fun adventure comedy, and deeply poignant if not depressing story about getting older. It really hit home for me. I’m the same age as the main characters, and I think most of us have a Gary in our lives, and Andy’s “We’re angry because we care” rant was heart-wrenching.

Also, being the same age as the characters and filmmakers means all the music and all the 80’s jokes were there just for me. After the film I couldn’t help but ask, “Will anyone under 35 even think this is funny???”

Riddick

Here’s the brief review I posted on Facebook, because I can’t think of a better way to put it: “So, yeah, it’s like one of those crazy gonzo sci-fi novels from the 70’s you borrowed off your weird Uncle Leroy’s bookshelf when you were a teenager, you know, the ones with the wild Frank Frazetta covers, and it kind of blew your mind and turned you on to science fiction forever, even though you sort of knew it was kind of deeply problematic in some ways, but it lead you to “Left Hand of Darkness” and “The Stars My Destination,” and you’ll always sort of secretly be in love with it even though you know you should probably never go back to it again. Yeah, it’s like that.”

If you have any love at all for big pulpy science fiction adventure, you should probably see this.

There’s some problematic handling of women characters, unfortunately. Katee Sackhoff did the best she could with the material she was given. But given how well the previous installments did with women characters (Fry from Pitch Black is still one of the most amazing women characters in all of science fiction film), it’s disappointing that they couldn’t think of anything else to do with her but have all the other characters fling rape jokes at her, pretty much constantly. At least she was uber-competent.

That’s a first; I saw the movie before I read your review. I really liked the post-apocalyptic vignette.
I had an evil thought after reading Rick and Amelia’s origin stories over the past weekend. Have you ever thought about actually writing Kitty’s book from Kitty takes a Holiday?

While the whole Riddick series will never be confused with greatness, it does its job as a mindless summer sci-fi action movie quite well. Granted there are some things that have to be glossed over but it doesn’t try to be something it’s not.
Another thing that impresssed me after the fact was when I learned that Vin Diesel wasn’t trying for the big paycheck here, since he pretty much backed a large part of this movie himself.

I’m 22 and I absolutely loved The World’s End; seen it three times by now! Part of it is that I saw both Shaun and Hot Fuzz in theatres as they came out, when I was thirteen and onwards, so I have a sentimental attachment to Pegg and Frost and really enjoyed all three films (this one the most of the three). I’m sure some of the eighties jokes were lost on me, but I loved the music, even bought the soundtrack just recently, and thought it was a moving, bittersweet, yet still hilarious end to the trilogy.